International Administration of Kosovo as a Driving Factor in Appearance of Trafficking in Human Beings

Abstract

Opinions, stances of the Albanian community about self-determination and the political demands for an independent political and territorial status of Kosovo by various colonial regimes, are longstanding. The disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was followed with wars among its constituent parts, and after the international military intervention, the peace was established in the region. By the Resolution 1244 of the Security Council of the UNO, in its 4001 meeting, adopted in June 1999, Kosovo was set under the international civil administration, which was accompanied by the deployment of military defence structure of KFOR, reaching a number of 35 000 soldiers, and the UNMIK civilian structure comprising a staff of 15 000 officials. A lot of various international non-governmental and governmental organizations were also deployed to Kosovo, which tremendously increased the presence of persons with origin of other countries. Such a situation created some favourable conditions for the criminal groups in order to expand the phenomenon of trafficking in persons to such a place as Kosovo being until 1999, trafficking in persons appeared on a low capacity and dynamics, and mainly as a transitional country with the intent of sexual use, while domestic trafficking was still unknown. However, this criminal phenomenon has been constantly increasing and reaching a concerning level, especially after 1999, on the occasion of setting Kosovo under the international administration by the UNO, the territory of Kosovo was no longer considered only a transitional country but also as destination location for the victims of trafficking in persons. The introduction and prevalence of this criminal phenomenon is as a result of Kosovo getting opened to the world, the organization of national criminal groups in cooperation with international organized criminal network. Undoubtedly, the increased number of persons originating from other countries as personnel of the international organizations to Kosovo contributed in increasing the number of trafficking in persons, because it was established that many potential clients using victims sexually were foreign citizens. Moreover, the lack of legal infrastructure on the combat and prevention of trafficking in persons as defined by international legal acts.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2s5p315